Saturday, August 24, 2013

Hello from Austin Texas! man it was mind numbing driving down here yesterday, the parade paced traffic all the way before and after Fort Worth. UGh and then again after Waco at some point... UGH.... but overall I made it here in 6 hours and arrived at 6:30 in time to change up for us to get to the performance. My bud here works at the performance art center downtown and get tickets to whatever is going on down there.
last night it was a bollywood musical written by a local dance guy and performed by a bunch of local dance troupes. wasn't all that bad, but we left at intermission...ha
we went to Elizabeth's Bahn Mi. I had the best Vietnamese style sandwich! chicken and sliced up carrots and a radish type thing so crunchy and their homemade mayo and cilantro. mmmm also followed that up with an ice cream sandwich, homemade ice cream with mint from their garden, crunchy chocolate cookies. also yum of course I never eat such things but while travelling, rigtht? now that I think about it, I don't like eating past 7pm usually anyway, and we were they at 9 getting dinner. ha
so today we are going to the dog park whenever my buddy wakes up I guess. and then hang out here and I think he's going to clean up his place a bit. and then maybe I'll go to an Indian furniture store I always like to visit while in town on 6th and Lamar. and then we are going to a pool party this afternoon, and then this evening a bowling charity event which should also be interesting and fun and social. so looks to be a good weekend. My goal is to leave back home first thing Sunday morning. possibly I'll wait and get out of here in time to shop at IKEA on the way out of town just as it opens. I need some lamps for the new office and want to look for a small table. and heck while I'm traveling with my new pickup, why not. :)
I also hope to get by the Stag menswear store on Congress today, although I'm not sure I can really shop for much since I"m waiting for my first paycheck and kind of stretching my July check from the last job right now... only one more week!
my first week of classes went really well over all. I can see that I'm going to want to keep things very planned and paced for each class. I also want to keep all my copies of things made a good week ahead of time since we have to turn everything in for copies. My students seem pretty well motivated into coming to class and interacting. What's funny are the high school kids that are enrolled concurrently. You can sort of tell the difference in their air of entitlement, or sense of non immediacy to the seriousness of a college class. It's different than the college age students who are starting the new chapter and branching out into higher ed for the first time. hard to explain, but anyway, a difference.
I had this girl student who is sort of mousy looking and has little round glasses and hair all pulled back and she's sort of small sized and nervous looking, she was hit by a car Wednesday, so in class Thurs, she was laying her head down and falling asleep at some point, and I was talking to her to ask if she was okay etc.. and she said notified me and the class about the accident... well i went on teaching. and then after assigning the class some questions to answer, I went over and talked to her cause she seemed like she needed to be listened to about the whole ordeal. I asked and prodded for info and she told me about being hit by a car while walking back from school and how the guy got a ticket and she was taken to the hospital and declared fine, but that she had a knot on her head from wear it hit the windshield and scraped up hands and knees with bandages. I told her she probably felt achy from the adrenaline rush and stress of it all. She said she wanted to come to class anyway so that hers profs knew she was serious about school. poor thing.
In another class I have 2 bromance buddies straight up! ha they pretty much graduated from the same high school and enrolled in the same classes, and it's so funny last week during a group activity how the one blond guy kept glancing over to his buddy with knowing smirks and giggles, I don't if it was about something I was saying or a girl in class, but it was pretty cute. ha.. overall I think it should be a pretty good semester and I don't recognize and too strong personalities or angry types.
had two students stop me in the halls last week to say hi, and I couldn't' remember their names but they knew mine, heck I had met 75 new people or so last week. ha. and I had a former student from the summer class walk back to the office with me just to chat a bit, that was cool. So anyway, I'm looking forward to the semester and hope I'll continue to give it my 110% effort. hope everyone enjoys the end of summer.
here at my buddy's place in Austin, his friend came over after dinner last night because his AC was broken. He brought his 2 great danes with him. my Austin buddy has a pit/lab mix dog. His condo is 600 sq/fr. so we had the bed, his friend on the hide a bed sofa, and 3 dogs. of course there is dog hair everywhere and you know I"m not used to living with a dog so...... but heck I"M IN AUSTIN!
thatguy, btw I was trying to think of a way to maybe catch up this weekend, but my buddy has my day pretty much scheduled. I'll try to see what I can do though. cheers.

Monday, August 19, 2013

I had a pretty good weekend...Sunday I was the grocery store stocking up on some food, and I swear it seemed like eveyrone in their was in a good mood. Maybe it's the weather... I saw a teacher I used to work with and called out to him. ha then I gave him a handshake and a semi awkward hug. he's blond and very muscle, the body of a dancer because he actually is a dancer. anyway, we talked about me leaving my school for my new job and how he was in charge of the ESL program at another district etc etc..
he used to be a facilitator at my district and so he and I talked about how I loved quitting last year when I didn't et the facilitator posisition and the guy who did wasn't even certified ESL.. we laughed about that and things and such. was awesome. He's out at work and among all of on staff when we were all working at the same districit. I cound't figure out if knew about me or not, not that it matters. just funny.
I came across a pretty good article today a friend posted: School Has Become Too Hostile for Boys, which really got me thinking... I always love gender issues stuff. I was trying to see from all sides, for example maybe if boys were taught martial arts instead and they could play about that instead of pretending to shoot a gun.. I dunno. I was also puzzled about the transgender news in California about school age kids using whatever facility of the sex they identified with. Although it's extremely fair to the transgender kid, I don't think it's fair enough to the regular students who'd rather not me in the locker oom or bath room when a 16 year old of the opposire sex even though identify with another.... tough world to live in sometimex trying to make everything fair for everybody.
man I'm way too tired to say anything else. I was up at 530 and off to the gymn this morning, swam laps, got dressed, came home or breakfast, went to work to teach 2 claases, office hours the rest of the day, went out to both sisters' to put some stuff in. and then back home. blah!

Sunday, August 18, 2013

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About Me

daninokc@gmail.com
After finishing grad school I left OKC to teach overseas for a year, returned to teach high school for 3 years, and now am teaching fulltime at a community college, it's AWESOME....I'm overall an optimistic fun social type of guy. I like to take care of myself, get involved in projects, love to travel and at home just find time to RELAX.